Chapter 13
For the next few days, Ciaran focused on work.
After the bloodshed at the wedding, the quickest way to ensure everything went back to normal was to focus on work. The study had been put back into order after the chaos, though the castle itself still carried the quieter signs of what had happened.
His men moved with sharper purpose in the passageways. The doors opened and closed with more care, and the voices dropped when they passed the room. As if everyone understood that some wounds had been dealt with in public and others were still being attended to in private.
Hector sat across from him at the desk with ink, sand, and sealed paper lying ready between them.
“We send it today,” Ciaran said.
Hector nodded. “Aye.”
There was no reason to delay. Jack Scott was dead. News like that needed to be sent properly before it got skewed by gossipmongers and people who only heard half of the story and decided to make up the second half.
Isla’s father would hear what had happened from Ciaran’s hand and no other person. That much was owed. If not from affection, then from order.
Ciaran kept his tone stripped of all but necessity as he spoke. “Write that Jack Scott died at me hand on the day of me wedding.”
Hector’s quill scratched across paper.
“Daenae make it fancy. That man deserves to hear everything plainly and simply,” Ciaran added. “Daenae dramatize what is unnecessary.”
“I ken how to write a clean sentence, Brother,” Hector huffed, looking up at him and rolling his eyes.
Ciaran ignored that.
He stood by the window for a moment, then turned back and headed to the desk. The room smelled of wax, old wood, and fresh ink. A room built for land matters, levies, agreements, and the dull, useful bones of rule.
He preferred it that way.
These things might be minor, but he liked having places like this. They made his brain alert and gave him avenues to think about these matters over and over again.
His eyes fixed on Hector’s hand. “Write that nay blame is laid at his father’s feet, nor at the feet of his clan, for the actions of a dead man who brought ruin by his own will.”
Hector looked up, only briefly. “Aye?”
“Aye.”
It was important that something like that was properly clarified. One man’s obsession had already bled too far across too many years. Ciaran would not feed it a fresh road now that Jack was dead. There was no need to widen an unnecessary feud after something had been settled.
Hector wrote as fast as he could, and when he was done, he read the sentence back. Ciaran corrected a word, then continued to speak.
Suddenly, he paused. The pause lasted so long that Hector looked up at him again.
Ciaran looked down at the page before him, seeing the dark lines clearly enough and yet not seeing them at all. His mind had gone elsewhere again, toward a room upstairs, toward Ava’s mouth, which had kissed him back without fear.
“Brother,” Hector’s voice cut through the silence.
Ciaran forced his attention back to the matter at hand.
“Add that nay vengeance will be sought,” he instructed.
Hector did not move.
Ciaran frowned. “Well?”
“Ye stopped speaking.”
Ciaran’s jaw tightened. “And now I have resumed. Write.”
Hector resumed writing, but the ease of the exchange had vanished. It always did when silence began revealing more than words.
Ciaran moved back to the desk and set two fingers against the wood beside the page. It should have been simple. State the fact. Close the matter. Send the letter. Return to the dozen other burdens waiting in the wake of a broken wedding and a dead enemy.
Instead, his eyes kept catching on the same line without taking it in. A dull pain throbbed in his shoulder, persistent, and the bandage pulled when he moved too sharply. Somehow, he could still feel Ava’s hands there, careful and warm and annoyingly steady.
He reached for the sealing wax before the letter was finished.
Hector’s hand came down on it lightly. “It isnae done.”
Ciaran looked at him.
Hector lifted his hand away. “What is wrong?”
“Ye wouldnae understand,” Ciaran muttered, too quickly.
He heard the defensive edge under his answer, the admission tucked inside the refusal.
If the matter had been political, military, or practical, Hector would have understood it very well. He had been raised in the same castle, under the same losses, beside the same responsibilities. To say otherwise was foolish.
But it was said now and could not be taken back.
Hector leaned back in his chair with the patience of a man not yet willing to push, but very much willing to wait. “That sounds suspiciously like something worth understanding.”
Ciaran gave him a flat look. “It sounds like none of yer concern.”
“Aye,” Hector said. “That, too.”
The study went quiet again.
Outside the door, a servant walked by, and Ciaran could hear the sound of someone dragging something across the floor.
These were sounds that usually kept him afloat and aware of things around him, but now they didn’t. They just made him much more anxious. It was a feeling he hated, and a part of him chalked it up to the wound in his shoulder.
He took the page from Hector, read through it once, and found no fault in it worth voicing. So he signed it. Hector watched him sand the ink, fold the page, and set the seal. When it was done, Ciaran placed the letter aside and stared at it.
“Do ye think this is going to do anything?” Hector asked.
Ciaran looked up at him. “Let us hope so.”
Hector did not move to leave. He remained where he was, one hand still resting near the folded letter as though the reason he was in the room was more than the letter itself.
“Do ye think we can keep this castle safe?”
Ciaran saw it then. The mild desperation on his brother’s face and the need for reassurance. Hector was just as worried as he was, probably even more.
“I daenae think we have any reason to worry,” Ciaran responded, hoping his voice conveyed as much reassurance as he could.
“And what about her?”
He narrowed his eyes. “Her?”
“Yer wife.”
Ciaran kept his eyes narrowed. “What does she have to do with any of this?”
“Ye ken very well she has a lot to do with this.”
Ciaran folded his arms. “What?”
“I understand yearning for a woman one doesnae or cannae have better than anyone.”
There was no pretense on Hector’s face. He had always been great at teasing him, but he wasn’t doing that. Not now. And that alone felt more irritating than anything.
For a moment, Ciaran said nothing. Then, he cleared his throat and resumed speaking like his brother had not dropped a rather profound thing for him to ponder. “I will be honest, though. I didnae expect her to be like this.”
The confession came out rougher than he had intended. It sounded like an accusation against her and the world.
Hector’s eyebrows rose, but he did not speak.
Ciaran pushed on, irritated now at having begun and therefore driven farther than he wished. “I chose the woman least interested in me for a reason. A practical match. A quiet one.” He made a brief, sharp motion with one hand. “And now she is the one I get.”
“Ye chose her.”
He frowned. “What?”
“Ye chose her to be yer wife.”
He swallowed, letting the words settle in his mind. “Aye, I suppose I did.”
“And I can tell ye that she hasnae been a problem so far. Ye could have done worse, Brother. Much worse, I tell ye.”
Ciaran let those words settle in the room as his mind ran over how true the statement was in hindsight.
There had been a lot of women at the auction.
He could have easily chosen one desperate for his approval and would always follow him around like a pet.
He could have ended up with a woman determined to use his status like anything else to gain influence.
But then he ended up with Ava. The one woman who didn’t even want to be here in the first place. How he could already feel drawn to a woman like that, he couldn’t tell. His mind went back to their kiss and the decision she had made the night of the attack.
“Ye ken she had leave to go,” he said more quietly. “Twice. She refused.”
“Perhaps she hopes to see if this might work?” Hector suggested.
Ciaran scoffed. “She hopes to see if she can get under me skin.”
Hector sighed. “Brother.”
“I cannae see any other reason why anyone would set the conditions she has, Hector. She asks for time as if an hour a day is nothing,” Ciaran said.
“As if these small things are harmless. Supper, walks, company. She kens very well what she is doing.” He looked toward the cold fireplace.
“Somehow, I got stuck with the one woman who has made a simple marriage quite impossible.”
That was the closest he had yet come to saying the whole truth.
Not that Ava was beautiful, though she was. Not that he thought of her too often, though he did. But that her choices had made her dangerous in a way beauty alone never could. She stayed. She insisted on being human inside a structure he had meant to keep clean of humanity.
Hector listened to all of it and then nodded with maddening calm. “But she seems nice.”
Ciaran stared at him. “Are ye serious right now?”
“I didnae lie, did I?”
Ciaran didn’t speak, but his response hung in the air just like the smell of beeswax and polish. Ava was kind, brave, clever, and easy to like. It made him feel cornered, and he hated feeling cornered.
He twisted his mouth and stared hard at his brother. “That is a child’s answer.”
“Perhaps,” Hector conceded. “But it isnae wrong.”
Ciaran had no response to that. At least nothing adequate enough.
Then Hector added, almost under his breath, “But so did Isla at first.”
Ciaran felt his skin suddenly grow heated at the mention of that name.
Isla.
It was quite bizarre how, even after all these years, her name could still have such an effect on him.
Hector was not being cruel in mentioning her, and he knew that. He wasn’t old enough to have fully understood what was going on that fateful day, but he had witnessed it. He had seen everything.
Ciaran’s voice cooled. “Whatever Isla did, or didnae do, it was Duncan who should have been more careful.”
The words sounded messy even to his own ears.
Duncan had been the brother who had married Isla. He had been the one who loved openly, trusted openly, stood in a wedding hall believing goodness and order would protect what he had chosen. If anyone should have seen more, guarded more, doubted more, it was him.
Or perhaps that was only the version of the story Ciaran still used because it let the lesson remain intact. Love makes fools, and trust makes people think they know better. Once people cared about something too much, blood would always follow.
Hector did not argue the point directly. He only leaned back further and raised an eyebrow. “And do ye mean to be careful?”
The question hung in the air.
Ciaran let out a breath through his nose.
He could have lied. He could have said yes with all the certainty he had once trusted in.
He could have even claimed the week of avoidance as proof enough that he was just as cautious as he’d always been.
But Hector had already seen too much, and Ciaran had gone too far into this to step back out cleanly.
“Ava doesnae strike me as the kind of woman one backs down from,” Hector added.
Ciaran felt a breath leave him. “Nay, she doesnae, does she?”
“So how do ye plan on keeping her at arm’s length?”
He exhaled. “I’m nae going to lie, I daenae ken yet. I’ll probably die trying.”
Hector fell quiet after that. He did not offer comfort. He did not turn wise all at once and start naming remedies for wounds older than either of them had known what to do with when they were made. He only sat with the truth, which was perhaps the most brotherly thing he could have done.
Outside the study, life moved with the ordinary sounds of a stronghold trying to settle after violence.
Inside, the older danger had been buried on paper.
Jack was dead. The message would be sent. No feud would follow. The old enemy with the blade was gone.
And still Ciaran sat there knowing that the greater threat now wore no steel, carried no hatred, and had twice been given the chance to leave him.
Twice she had stayed.
Neither brother said her name again. They did not need to. It sat between them plainly enough, in the letter set aside, in the silence that followed, in the grim shape of the answer Ciaran had just given.
Ava was more dangerous to him now than any armed man had been.
And worse, he already knew the walls that had kept him safe for so long were not holding as cleanly as they once had.